Mr Matthew McConville, the Head of our specialised Data Breach Department at Irvings Law has successfully represented a client in a data breach compensation claim against the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council. The said client wishes to be unnamed for the purposes of this case report and as such will be referred to as ‘Mr S’.
Mr S was/is a Senior Property Lawyer for Royal Borough of Greenwich Council. In November 2018, Mr S faced disciplinary action and was investigated in relation to gross misconduct following an allegation that had been made against him. There is no need to go into the same in this part of this case report due to the lack of relevance but it is sufficient to point out that a decision of gross misconduct was reached and Mr S was in the process of appealing this.
As part of this process, Mr S found two emails on the printer on the fourth floor of his work place which included his personal and sensitive information regarding the said disciplinary action.
The said emails had information within them which discussed:-
Following this, Mr S lodged a complaint to the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council and an investigation ensued as a result of this. The said report concluded that these actions constituted a data breach and the incident was then reported to the Corporate Data Guardian as well as improved work place practices.
As Royal Borough of Greenwich Council had admitted that a data breach had occurred in this incident whereby it was escalated to the Corporate Data Guardian and there have been improved work place practices implement as a result, Mr S sought compensation because the nature of the personal data contained within the admitted breach was particularly private/confidential and sensitive as it surrounds conduct which have brought about gross misconduct proceedings.
Without hesitation, Mr McConville offered to act for Mr S on a no win, no fee basis and once instructed, a Letter of Claim was submitted to Royal Borough of Greenwich Council.
Mr McConville alleged that as the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council had not kept Mr S’ sensitive information safe and secure, they had breached / invaded his privacy under the Human Rights Act, had breached the Data Protection Act 2018/the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as well as confidence following their misuse of private information pertaining to Mr S.
In response to the presented claim, the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council accepted breach and that Mr S would have suffered distress. As a result, Royal Borough of Greenwich Council offered £1,000.00 in compensation to Mr S which was inclusive of his legal costs. Mr McConville advised Mr S to reject the same and make a counter-offer of £3,500.00 plus legal costs to the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council. After negotiation, the Royal Borough of Greenwich Council accepted Mr S’ said counter-offer.
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